Daily Lessons for Teaching Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

Lesson 1 (from When in the Future They Look Back on Us)

Objective

When in the Future They Look Back on Us

Lessing believed that humans have learned many lessons throughout history and, if we would only put them into practice, we would be stronger as a society. However, people often choose to ignore the lessons already taught to us. The purpose of this lesson is to examine the effect of ignoring lessons already learned in society.

Lesson

1) Class Discussion: The Arthasastra was a book written 2,000 years ago. It discussed the importance of sensible governing. What is sensible governing? Why is it important to society? What ideas did this book contain that have been used? Did society apply all lessons learned 2,000 years ago? Why or why not?

2) Group Activity: Divide the class into groups of two. Have each group discuss the following topic: Throughout history, people have exercised bigotry and hatred over one another. Why did people go along...